When you love cheap eats, it’s tough to stay away from Allston, which boasts a veritable UN of budget-friendly restaurants. Homesick students and ex-pats from around the globe can be found chatting in their native languages over the foods of their homelands, then picking up tiny checks. After eyeing it for months, I finally visited Taqueria El Carrizal, which like many ostensibly Mexican places is actually Guatemalan/Salvadoran with a far-ranging Latin-American menu.

You could order ho-hum, gringo-ish, cheese-laden nachos ($6–$8), burritos ($6–$7), and fajitas ($12–$22) here, but the Central and South American dishes and Mexican tacos favored by Latino patrons seem closer to Allston’s authentically minded spirit.

Estragon A divorce and new partners have put Julio de Haro in the position to open Estragon, a larger restaurant with a 1930s-tapas-bar theme. Nostalgia deepens authenticity, no?

La Brace Italian Grille La Brace is a small, splendid North End restaurant featuring grilled foods with just enough red sauce to satisfy the neighborhood.

Spark Spark is Newport’s new kid on the block, or rather those three blocks along Broadway that have become the city’s restaurant row.

Sushi-Teq PerSushi-Teq starts with a really mediocre idea — pairing sushi with tequila and salsa music — and drops it into a glass cube with a two-wall color organ.

Markos Kabob and More Though many years have passed since I patiently had to explain what “pita bread” was to local supermarket managers, it’s still not that common to find a Middle Eastern restaurant smack in the middle of small-town Rhode Island.

PORCHETTA ARROSTO AT CINQUECENTO | January 18, 2013 As a South Ender, I find it easy to admire the smooth professionalism and crowd-pleasing instincts of the Aquitaine Group, which operates six of its eight restaurants in the neighborhood, including Metropolis, Union, Aquitaine, and Gaslight.